The Hollow Men
T. S. Eliot
1888 to 1965
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A penny for the Old Guy
I
We the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, without colour.
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but
As the hollow men
II
Eyes dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the behaves
No nearer—
Not that final meeting
the twilight kingdom
III
This is the dead
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
IV
eyes are not here
There are no eyes
In this valley of dying stars
In hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the river
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.
V
we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
And spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine
Life is
For Thine is the
This is way the world ends
This is the way world ends
This is the way the world
Not with a bang but a whimper.